


Art Appreciation

by ArwenKenobi



Series: Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2013 [24]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:49:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenKenobi/pseuds/ArwenKenobi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John and Sherlock receive a thank you gift from a client</p>
            </blockquote>





	Art Appreciation

"John, what is that?"

"A gift, I would assume." John has only been in the flat for about five minutes and Sherlock is just walking in. There's a note pinned delicately across the frame from Mrs. Hudson about how they agreed that she wasn't their delivery woman. John plucks it off and stuffs it in his pocket. "From Baxter I assume."

"Who?"

John rolls his eyes. "Even Baxter? The art collector we helped last week? His brother was swapping his originals for prints."

"This is a print," Sherlock observes. "An extra one he had in the back that he can't get rid of. Lovely gift."

John snorts his agreement. Though truth be told he sort of likes the thing for whatever reason. The man looks utterly ridiculous smoking a pipe that long but at the same time looks quite distinguished. Yes, I am smoking a stupidly long pipe. No, I do not care what you think of it. Piss off and let me enjoy myself. It rather sums up his and Sherlock's entire operation. 

"It's going on the mantel, on the left side of the mirror." John announces. 

Sherlock nods his agreement. "You're also more than welcome to stick it on the front door. Perhaps our more astute prospective clients will recognize the warning." 

"That would be no one then wouldn't it?" John smirks. Sherlock decides that John's positioning was a better idea after all.

It's only later that John notices the painter's name scrawled at the bottom. "Isn't your mother's side of the family called Vernet?" he asks. 

"He is a relation," Sherlock confirms without lifting his head from the police file he's reviewing. Reviewing and heavily editing it seems. 

John cocks his head. "How are you with a paintbrush?" 

Sherlock tuts. "Art in the blood can take the strangest forms, John. And you know full well the answer to that." 

"That's what makes it a joke, Sherlock." John's seen Sherlock have to resort to crude pictograms to hammer a point into the more useless police officers they've worked with and John can safely say that the drawings are barely decipherable as anything. The man can produce a detailed diagram if he has to but that's about it. Then again John's no judge of art either - he frequently will forget arms when he draws stick figures. 

When Sherlock gives up on the revisions and picks up the violin, John hears the art that's present in that painting and decides that art in the blood doesn't take on that strange of a form at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 24: [Self Portrait by Horace Vernet](http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=87339)


End file.
